Photos: AMP Radio pre-party @ Conga Room & Lady Gaga @ Staples Center

The night started with an AMP Radio pre-party at the Conga Room at L.A. Live.

Besides all the people dressed up to celebrate Mother Monster’s birthday, Rhea Litre performed two of Lady Gaga’s hits including “Alejandro” and “Born This Way.” The 24mm lens gave me plenty of room to capture the crowd enjoying the performance.

All the little monsters came out in full force to celebrate Mother Monster’s birthday. One nice fan let me snap this pic. Shooting available light on the floor in the crowd was not easy.

So this picture is similar to the Getty Images being used, I just happen to take it from a different angle.

Some little monsters even brought gifts to give Lady Gaga.

She then called a fan from the audience, and because he picked up Virgin Mobile gives $25,000 to charity and he also gets to meet Lady Gaga after the show!

Then all of a sudden Beyoncé called to interrupt which meant Telephone was the next song.

Before she started to sing Born this Way acoustically Lady Gaga brought out a pair of ruby slippers, but not just any ruby slippers. The slippers, believed to have been made at the time of the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, were given to her by her management before she went on stage.

She then described how she once lost out on the role of Dorothy to the school bully.
She said: “I wanted to be Dorothy so bad. I was in 8th grade and she was a senior. I definitely deserved to get it, but I didn’t get it. I was one of the people in the chorus, the worst role.
“On behalf of myself and all of those bullied around the world, now these *bleeping* ruby slippers are mine.”

Everyone in the stadium cheered for Mother Monster.

I got lucky with the lights on this one.

It was the “Fame Monster”.

I can’t help myself when I get a chance to take a picture of a picture.

After the encore performance of Born This Way there was cake and everybody sang Happy Birthday to Mother Monster.

Photographer’s Notes:

Camera Used:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

Lens Used:

Leica DC Vario-Summicron 5.1-19.2mm f/2-3.3

Did I wish that I could have been a member of the media with the ability to have brought my DSLR and super telephoto lens? Yes!

That also would have meant that I would only have the same 3 song shoot time as all the other photographers. Buying an actual ticket and waiting in line allowed me to stay until the end and enjoy the total experience.

So while I could not bring my DSLR, I was able to bring my trusty Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 point and shoot with a Leica lens. Shooting in manual mode is my preferred method for this type of environment. Luckily the lights were bright enough to let me shoot with an ISO of 800 and a shutter speed of either 1/160 or 1/200 and anywhere from an aperture of f/2.8 – f/3.3.

One thing I did learn was that the digital zoom will not work in RAW shooting mode. It only works when you shoot in JPG mode. If you’re only shooting for web content, realistically though with a 10 megapixel camera it might be better to not use the digital zoom and just crop the optically zoomed image because the quality gets pretty degraded with the digital zoom.

If you’d like to see more high res pics, head on over to my main site to see my pics of Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga’s Setlist for The Monster Ball Tour at the Staples Center on March 28, 2011: